The United States completed the greatest comeback in Presidents Cup history at Medinah, turning a 10.5-7.5 deficit into a 17-13 victory by crushing the International Team 9.5-2.5 in Sunday singles. It was spectacular and historic. It also strengthened a question we raised before the first singles match was played: why is a country producing so many of the world’s best golfers just 8-26 in foursomes across the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup since 2023?
Twenty-four hours before the end of the 2026 Presidents Cup, we published an analysis of an American weakness that had already become difficult to dismiss.
Across the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup since 2023, the United States had won only eight of 34 foursomes matches. At Medinah alone, the Americans were 2-7 in alternate shot, including a 5-0 sweep by the International Team on Friday.
Our question was therefore asked before anyone knew who would lift the trophy: America has many of the world’s best golfers. Why has it become so difficult to turn them into the best pairs?
Sunday did not answer that question. It made it more interesting.
The American miracle at Medinah
In 2012, Medinah became synonymous with one of the most painful collapses in American golf history. The United States led Europe 10-6 entering the Ryder Cup singles before losing 14.5-13.5.
Fourteen years later, the Americans produced a Medinah comeback of their own.
They entered Sunday trailing the International Team 10.5-7.5, the first International side ever to take a lead into Presidents Cup singles on American soil. They then won 9.5 of the 12 available points, the widest margin ever recorded in a Presidents Cup singles session, to win 17-13 and complete the largest final-day comeback in the competition’s history.
Cameron Young started the recovery by beating Ryo Hisatsune 3&2. Justin Thomas overwhelmed Corey Conners 5&3. Scottie Scheffler defeated Nico Echavarria 2&1 and Chris Gotterup held off Christiaan Bezuidenhout 1 up. Later, Jackson Koivun completed an impressive comeback against Si Woo Kim to win 2 up.
The decisive point belonged to Jacob Bridgeman. His match against Min Woo Lee reached the 18th all square. Lee could not make the birdie he needed after finding the right side of the green with his approach, and Bridgeman completed his par to win 1 up and guarantee that the Presidents Cup would remain in American hands.
“I think these guys never lost faith,” Brandt Snedeker said afterwards. He recalled telling his players the previous evening that strange things had happened before at Medinah. This time, history turned in America’s favour.
But beneath the celebration remained a statistical contrast that is difficult to overlook.
2-7 together. 9.5-2.5 alone.
Strip the week down to two numbers and the American paradox becomes striking.
Foursomes at Medinah: USA 2-7.
Sunday singles: USA 9.5-2.5.
Expand the first number across the last four Ryder and Presidents Cups and the pattern becomes even harder to dismiss: 1-7 at the 2023 Ryder Cup, 3-6 at the 2024 Presidents Cup, 2-6 at the 2025 Ryder Cup and 2-7 at Medinah.
That produces the 8-26 foursomes record we highlighted before Sunday’s comeback.
Yet the contrast should not be turned into proof that American golfers simply become better when separated from their partners. Sunday’s singles performance has other explanations, and one of them is that singles have already become an American strength.
At the 2024 Presidents Cup in Montreal, the United States won singles 7.5-4.5. At the 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black, it collected 8.5 points to Europe’s 3.5 on Sunday, although that total includes the half-point automatically awarded to both Harris English and Viktor Hovland when Hovland was unable to play because of a neck injury.
Add Medinah and the United States has collected 25.5 of the 36 available singles points in its last three Ryder and Presidents Cups.
There are no pairings to optimize in singles, no alternate-shot sequence to manage and no partner’s miss to absorb. Each player plays his own ball against one opponent. That is precisely the format in which America’s extraordinary individual depth should produce its greatest advantage.
Snedeker himself effectively acknowledged the distinction before play began Sunday. Speaking on the first tee, he accepted that his message during the week had not always been clear enough and shifted the responsibility back towards the players: the task now was individual golf, and they needed to do what they did best.
They did.
Fatigue is part of the Sunday story
There is another variable that deserves consideration before drawing too much from the 9.5-2.5 score.
Geoff Ogilvy relied heavily on the core of the International Team that had built the lead. Five of his players competed in all five sessions. Min Woo Lee, for example, had played every session before facing Bridgeman on Sunday. The strategy was understandable: Lee and several of the team’s most heavily used players had helped put the Internationals into a position they had never previously occupied on American soil.
By Sunday, however, accumulated physical and mental fatigue may have become a factor.
That possibility does not invalidate what happened in singles, nor does it absolve the Internationals. It simply complicates the interpretation. Ogilvy faced the classic captain’s dilemma: resting key players earlier might have left them fresher for Sunday, but those same players were instrumental in creating the three-point lead they were trying to defend.
The two explanations can coexist. The Internationals may have been depleted after three intense days and the Americans may possess a structural advantage when a team competition becomes 12 individual contests.
The Internationals built the opportunity — then lost it
For three days, the International Team had done almost everything required to change the history of this competition.
It lost Thursday’s four-ball session narrowly, 3-2, then swept Friday’s foursomes 5-0. Saturday ended with the Internationals still holding a three-point advantage.
They entered Sunday needing five points from 12 matches to win the Presidents Cup for the first time since 1998.
They collected 2.5.
Tom Kim defeated Wyndham Clark 3&2 and Sungjae Im beat Sam Burns 3&1, providing the International Team’s only two full points. Nick Taylor supplied the remaining half by halving his match with Russell Henley.
There was no single collapse that explains everything. The scoreboard simply became progressively redder as American individual depth asserted itself.
That distinction matters. For three days, the International Team demonstrated that it could compete with — and sometimes comprehensively beat — the United States through pair golf. When the competition became 12 individual matches, the balance changed dramatically.
Scottie Scheffler remains the perfect illustration
Nobody captures that distinction better than Scottie Scheffler.
After losing Friday’s foursomes alongside Sam Burns, the world No. 1’s combined Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup record in alternate shot fell to 1-8-0. Snedeker subsequently left him out of Saturday afternoon’s foursomes.
On Sunday, Scheffler returned to individual match play and beat Nico Echavarria 2&1.
It would nevertheless be wrong to use Scheffler as evidence that he cannot play successfully with a partner. He and Burns won both of their four-ball matches at Medinah. The problem highlighted by his record is considerably narrower than “team golf”.
It is foursomes.
Alternate shot requires more than putting two talented golfers together. Every shot determines the next player’s situation. Driving patterns, preferred approach distances, typical misses, recovery skills, putting, temperament and even which player hits from the odd or even tees can alter the value of a partnership.
Scheffler can be the best individual golfer in the world and still belong to an ineffective foursomes combination. Those two statements are not contradictory.
That is precisely the point.
Young and Gotterup make the question harder
Cameron Young and Chris Gotterup showed during the same week that American golfers are perfectly capable of forming an effective alternate-shot partnership.
On Saturday morning, they beat Nick Taylor and Corey Conners 2&1 in four-ball. Snedeker kept them together for the afternoon foursomes and they demolished Adam Scott and Sungjae Im 6&4.
Young and Gotterup share similar aggressive styles, enormous length and enough familiarity to understand the difficult positions in which each can leave the other. Gotterup provided perhaps the most revealing description of their compatibility when he explained that it was not uncomfortable for either player to find himself in the places his partner tended to leave him.
The uncomfortable part for American leadership was that this combination had been identified before Saturday.
Snedeker acknowledged that Young and Gotterup had been considered early in the process as a potential alternate-shot pairing. Yet when Friday’s foursomes began, Young played alongside Justin Thomas and lost 3&2, while Gotterup sat out.
Young and Gotterup were finally paired in foursomes only after the United States had been swept 5-0.
That leaves a question which Sunday’s victory cannot erase: if the Americans can identify combinations that work, why are they still so frequently failing to deploy enough of them?
Not a problem of personnel continuity
There is a tempting explanation for America’s repeated foursomes failures.
The Presidents Cup is controlled by the PGA Tour and the Ryder Cup by the PGA of America. One might therefore imagine two largely separate American systems that fail to transfer knowledge from one competition to another.
The personnel tell a different story.
Jim Furyk captained the 2024 Presidents Cup team, with Brandt Snedeker among his assistants. Snedeker then served under Keegan Bradley at the 2025 Ryder Cup. Furyk was also part of Bradley’s leadership group at Bethpage before becoming one of Snedeker’s assistants at Medinah, where Bradley was also an assistant.
Furyk’s Medinah role was particularly relevant because it gave him direct experience with the players and preparation ahead of his next assignment: captaining the United States at the 2027 Ryder Cup at Adare Manor.
There is therefore significant personnel continuity at the top of American men’s team golf.
That makes the central question more interesting, not less.
Why has a leadership group containing many of the same people watched the United States go 8-26 in foursomes since 2023 without yet finding a durable solution?
There may be perfectly reasonable answers. Match play contains enormous variance. European and International opponents have played exceptional golf. Statistical models cannot predict every putt, bounce or momentum swing. We also do not know exactly how proprietary pairing data and analysis are shared between the PGA Tour and PGA of America.
The available evidence therefore does not justify claiming that the American staff is ignoring data or failing to communicate.
It does justify asking why the results have remained so poor despite substantial continuity among the people trying to solve the problem.
Sunday also killed the easiest explanation
After the victory, Snedeker pushed back strongly against one of the oldest criticisms of American team golf.
“I’m tired of hearing how these guys aren’t close. I’m tired of hearing how we can’t play team golf. Guys just proved it right then and there.”
On the first point, Medinah gave him considerable evidence.
As Jackson Koivun fought back from 2 down against Si Woo Kim, American players progressively gathered around his match. Young and Thomas were there. Scheffler, Burns and Wyndham Clark joined them. When Koivun completed his comeback, his teammates surrounded the 21-year-old rookie. The camaraderie that American teams are routinely accused of lacking was plainly visible.
That matters because it removes an easy explanation for the foursomes numbers.
These players clearly care about one another. They clearly wanted to win for one another. And on Sunday they produced one of the great collective comebacks in Presidents Cup history.
The question is therefore not whether they constitute a team emotionally.
It is whether American leadership has learned how to convert that team into the right pairs tactically.
The Cup is safe. The problem isn’t solved.
A victory like Medinah changes the way mistakes are remembered.
Had the International Team converted its 10.5-7.5 lead, every pairing decision made by Snedeker would now be undergoing forensic examination. Friday’s 5-0 foursomes sweep would be described as catastrophic. Scheffler’s 1-8 alternate-shot record would dominate the post-mortem. Waiting until Saturday to deploy Young and Gotterup would look like a major tactical error.
Instead, the United States won 17-13.
Snedeker deserves credit for maintaining belief inside his team, and his players deserve even more for producing a historic Sunday with almost no margin for error. The Americans did not steal this Presidents Cup. When the competition was on the line, they overwhelmed the International Team.
But winning does not make the earlier evidence disappear.
Medinah suggests that the United States does not have a talent problem. Sunday’s scenes also make the traditional explanation of an American friendship or chemistry problem increasingly unconvincing.
What remains looks more specific: an optimization problem in foursomes.
And that distinction matters because the next examination is already approaching.
Jim Furyk was in the American team room at Medinah. In 2027 he will lead many of the same players at Adare Manor, where the United States will try to win a Ryder Cup on European soil for the first time since 1993.
The Presidents Cup has been saved.
The American foursomes problem has not.
And after Medinah, nobody in that room can say they haven’t seen it.